booker prize

How many authors does it take to write one short story? Fifteen it turns out if the literary experiment just published in The New York Times is anything to go by. Joshua Ferris, shortlisted for this year’s Booker prize for his novel To Rise Again At A Decent Hour, started…

Five of the eight shortlisted works for the £40,000 Folio prize are by Americans, Amity Gaige for Schroder and Sergio De La Pava for A Naked Singularity – both debut novels – Rachel Kushner for The Flame Throwers, George Saunders for his story collection Tenth of December and Kent Haruf for Benediction. Could…

New Zealander Eleanor Catton has won the 2013 Booker Prize making her the youngest winner of the prize ever, and her book The Luminaries, set in the 19th Century New Zealand Gold Rush, the longest at more than 800 pages. Chair of the judging panel, writer and critic Robert Macfarlane…

Jim Crace’s Harvest has firmed as Bookie’s favourite to take the Booker Prize announced later today and having now completed all six finalists I’m placing my $5 on him as well. If I was going for a Trifecta ( if indeed I was completely sure what a Trifecta actually was) I’d…

She heard the men singing. Their shouts of ‘lai-lai-lai!’ rolled down the dusty synagogue corridor. They were coming for her. This was it. This was her day. The day her real life started. She was nineteen and had never held a boy’s hand. The only man to touch her had been her father and his physical affection had dwindled since her body had curved and ripened.

Chani Kaufmann, brought up in a large impoverished Jewish family in North West London’s large orthodox community, has become engaged to gauche and bookish Baruch, despite the not-so-subtle sabotage attempts by his socially-ambitious mother. She is nervous and exhilarated by the idea that marriage would actually lift the “bell jar’’ under which she lives her life, or at least, having someone to share it with.

Eve Harris’s debut novel, The Marrying of Chani Kaufmann , is essentially two stories running in parallel, occasionally merging before going their separate ways again. For Chani is not the only one struggling to understand and conform to the strict religious and social mores of orthodox Jewish life. The Rebbetzin, Rabbi Lieberman’s wife, has been instructing her in the rites and obligations of marriage, but the process revives painful memories of her own romance and introduction into the Jewish life in Jerusalem and gradually makes her question everything about the daily rhythms of life that have directed her for years. For her the “drug of spiritual bliss’’ had worn off.

Darling is ten, growing up in the ironically-named Paradise, a hastily constructed shanty town in Zimbabwe “all tin and stretch(ing) out like a wet sheepskin nailed on the ground to dry.” She hangs out with a motley collection of friends, Bastard and Godknows, Sbho, Stina and 11-year-old Chipo who is…

Staying for a moment with the Booker Prize theme, the film of John Banville’s Booker Prize-winning The Sea, is scheduled for release in England in September. For a quick preview go to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2013/jul/08/the-sea-ciaran-hinds-charlotte-rampling-video The movie stars Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter, Swimming Pool, Dexter), Rufus Sewell (Dangerous Beauty, The Woodlanders,…

Women have dominated the Booker Prize long list taking out seven of the 13 slots. In an eclectic selection said by the judges to be the most diverse ever there was only a smattering of well-known authors. There was a fair international spread with four British authors, three Irish and representatives from Malaysia, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, India and Canada. The full long list is:

The hype that always surrounds the prestigious Booker Prize has already begun with the news that the Long List for 2013 will be announced on July 25th.

Last year’s list provided some treasurers. Apart from winner Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists was probably my favorite read of the year and a book that everyone to whom I recommended it seems to have enjoyed too, Other memorable ones are Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, The Lighthouse by Alison Moore and Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil.

It’s a big deal, for reputation and sales, to make it onto even the Long List of what is one of the world’s most prestigious literary competitions. So, who will make it into the spotlight in 2013? Apart from the judges, my guess is as good as any, so here are some possible contenders.

TransAtlantic by Colum McCann: McCann’s novel, is divided into a series of narratives

With the announcement of the Booker Prize winner imminent, and having read five of the books on the shortlist, I am declaring my hand and announcing my winner now: Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel. It was a close thing though. Right up to the end I have been…

Quote of the day

“I think a lot of people have been, secretly perhaps, reading and loving children’s books in adulthood for a long time. You are missing a wealth of treasures.. To miss out on something so rich, strange, varied and enticing in adulthood, just out of embarrassment or perhaps because it hasn’t occurred to you, seems such a waste. There is such joy to be had ...Go to children’s fiction to see the world with double eyes: your own, and those of your childhood self,"